Recently (late 1999?) Zuka Juice was bought by Jamba Juice, a similar chain built on the same concept. Although all the posters and leaflets said that the same quality would be kept up despite the merger, I have not found that to be true. I no longer frequent the place, and now I have to drink Mountain Dew instead of tasty, healthy fruit drinks.

Zuka/Jamba Juice has a health-food/pseudotribal theme. Their drinks had names like "Lime Sublime", "Mango Mango", and "The Cold Warrior", which contained 2000% of your daily requirement for Vitamin C. Most of the drinks are made with orange juice as the base -- they get juice from their juicing machine, put it in a blender with ice, frozen fruit, and sometimes sherbet, and blend it up. Zuka had a few drinks that weren't based on fruit (like coffee or nonfat milk), but they were predominantly a smoothie joint.

In keeping with the faddish health-kick business, Jamba Juice will add a "booster" to your drink free of charge (additional boosters cost some $0.99 or something). These include ginseng, creatine, wheatgrass juice, and so on.

The other problem with Jamba Juice in Tucson is that they are in very inconvenient locations: one almost in Marana and the other near Sabino Canyon -- neither of these locations are very compatible with working or living in the actual city. Oh well.

One of my favorite drinks was created by a friend and coworker. You won't find it on any menus, but try asking an employee to make one for you. My friends and I refer to it was a SweetTart, and it is created from the following ingredients:

That will make one 24 oz. SweetTart; you'll have to play around with the amounts to find the right proportions for different sizes. It's quite tasty, pretty sweet, but with a nice twist from the lemon juice. Be creative the next time you're in a Jamba, think about your favorite fruits and what would go good together.